


Changing Stars

by AraSigyrn



Category: King Arthur (2004)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 07:54:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1091460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AraSigyrn/pseuds/AraSigyrn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lancelot thinks on home and Arthur...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Changing Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sasha_b](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sasha_b/gifts).



> Many thanks to my beta for speedy feedback.

Lancelot learned of Romans in the same manner that he learned of storm and famine: a plague sent by gods to temper and test the people of the grass lands. When he was rounded up at the tips of swords and spears, another hostage to Roman pride and power, Lancelot clung to the back of the horse that would be his and hated them. He hated well and it was easy to hate in those early days when the Romans swept them West.

Lancelot hated many things in those days. He hated the clipped and tamed horse that was carrying him away. It was a cull, a crudely shaped horse that lurched instead of walked and he hated it. He hated the arrogant Romans who sneered at them and drove them to work with switches. He hated the other boys, all of them strange to him. He hated the weather which brightened with every step towards his slavery. He hated the thin, miserly gruel that was all he could stomach. 

Most of all, he hated how the stars slowly changed overhead as the land changed behind them and his home and his sisters got left further and further behind.

He met Bors there, the brash manner already present but the powerful punch was still several years ahead. Bors was the boy who broke the unspoken rule and mocked Lancelot for the tears in his eyes when they crossed the Great River. It was the farthest from home that anyone from his tribe had gone in all their history and the stories of his grandfather. Lancelot threw the first punch and it was their Roman instructor Sestius Germannis who tore them apart with hard-knuckled fists and sent them both to the hold to scrub away mold.

It was an unlikely start to a friendship but Gawaine brought Lancelot a stolen cup of wine.

"He should not have said that," Gawaine said, looking past the soiled wooden skin of the ship. "We all mourn what was taken."

Gawaine, they will joke in years ahead, was born to be a wise man. He knows how to speak the truth that none of the others can but Lancelot was still too raw, too young to appreciate wisdom. He took the wine and the sting of it against his split lip brought a fresh wave of tears to his eyes and he did not answer Gawaine.

The far side of the river was the strangest land that Lancelot had imagined with yellowed grass and sandy soil that made the hooves of the horses slip and skid as they learnt to walk again. Soothing them took time and attention that Lancelot spared gratefully.

Tristan was the one who met them from the galley ship, an elder youth with hooded eyes, rising like a rock amid the sea of Roman merchants and polished breastplates. He spoke Latin well enough to get what they needed from their new masters but even then, Tristan was cool and remote. He was a good trainer, but a poor refuge and his manner forced the boys to turn to each other for friendship.

They grew up in those few hellish months when the divide between Roman and not is carved. They train endlessly in the hot, rancid air of the city where nothing they did was good enough. The Roman instructors trained them in the arts of war as befits the Roman auxiliaries. No innocence remained after the less than tender care of their instructors. Some of the boys - Lancelot's brothers in spirit if not in blood- died and were burnt under the alien Roman sun with no horses to carry their souls to the afterlife. Tristan was the one who supplied the ashes with small clay horses to address the loss; the first hint of the warm heart beneath the ice of his exterior.

When they were not training, they sat in cool marble halls raised up to a God who speaks of peace, and yielding softness, and inspired the bloody Empire that brought them here. Lancelot learned to mouth along with what they wanted to hear. They pretended that they were changing while protecting their memories of the land that birthed them.

Lancelot will not remember the details of this time; only the pain, the heat and the blood. The only truly memorable event is the day that they meet the man who will lead them for the next twenty years. Arthur Cosa.

Lancelot will remember how the sun shone on his polished breastplate and the ridiculous plumes in his helmet. Lancelot hated him on sight. Bors made a crude comment in their own tongue and Arthur punched him in the face. Bors spat blood and Arthur held out a hand to pull him back to his feet. 

"Let us make a deal, my friend," Arthur said, his smile baring his teeth. "You tell me what you said and I will share the wine in my saddle bags with you after training."

"You didn't already know?" Gawaine asked warily as they gathered around him.

"I knew the tone," Arthur admitted easily. "Not the words."

Tristan laughed first but they were all laughing within a minute. Arthur and Bors laughing as hard as any of them. The instructors muttered darkly but none of them dared to cross Arthur in word or deed. It was a petty triumph but their first as a unit.

"I will not condescend to you," Arthur said, raising his voice so they could all hear him. "I will lead you and I will fight alongside you and we will triumph!" 

As speeches go, it was not particularly memorable. If he had left the matter there, no-one would have remembered but Arthur stripped off his armour and joined them in the drills. He fought as fair as any of them, which is not to say much considering their band included Bors, Tristan and Dagonet. He did not protest or use his polished Roman tongue to armour himself against their fists and feet.

Perhaps it was on that first day, when Arthur lowered himself to brawl with them and took them to taverns for wine and bread afterwards, that Lancelot first faltered in his hate of Romans. Arthur was not the fat, corrupt commander that they had expected. Words like 'honour' and 'loyalty' took on a ring of truth when he spoke them that half-convinced them even then. 

He was also fair or as Bors more crudely put it - possessed of "an arse that would suit Venus herself!" - and Lancelot hated them both. Bors for the casually lewd comments that spill from his lips as easily as his breath and Arthur for ...being Arthur and upturning the order of Lancelot's world. At least, Lancelot remembers it as hate but the emotions that Arthur has stirred up in him have never been so simple. Arthur's fierce pride and unexpected humility confused Lancelot from the first. Nor was he the only one; Tristan unbent enough to joke and he looked gratified when Arthur laughed every time.

Not that Arthur was perfect; he was young -impossibly young in retrospect- and he could be brash or crude or simply careless of those around him. He was the first Roman Lancelot met who believed the words of the Roman God and tried to explain it to them.

When they go to war at last, sent to aid a Roman general who required a legion of scouts to locate his arse every morning, Arthur was at their head. All their training was rewarded and Lancelot remembers being unhorsed in the melee, a confusion of blood and steel and the certainty that he was going to die. Then Arthur was there, his back slamming into Lancelot's like a rock amid the spring tides and Lancelot anchored himself there and let the tide of battle bring their enemies to his blades.

When they had won, the field strewn with the bodies of the dead, Arthur's laughter rang out in a breathless peal. Lancelot's heart pounded in his chest and his breath came in gasps. The thrill of battle still hummed through his veins and Arthur's arm across his shoulders seemed to weigh nothing at all.

That night, with the local swill firing his blood instead of battle, Lancelot sang around the fire with his brothers and Arthur who shone like the sun in the fire's light. Lancelot fell into his orbit and was lost. That night, they stumbled to their beds and came together in the dark. It was clumsy, crude and left Lancelot winded as a fall from a galloping horse.

He did not realise it then but that was the night that began Lancelot's taming. He could hate Rome, spit on the laws that made him and his people slaves, but from that night, Arthur was separate from the Rome that Lancelot cursed every morning when he rose. Arthur, infuriating and maddening, seeps into Lancelot's life until at last, it comes to this.

He followed Arthur, trusted him and fought for him until at last they are sent to Britannia with the promise of freedom after twenty years of war. Lancelot makes plans that are mostly dreams of how he will take Arthur to see his homeland and they will share a hut and a small herd of horses. Idle dreams that are proven useless by the Woden wench and her people. Lancelot argues, almost begs but Arthur, ever the noble warrior, will not be swayed.

Even when Lancelot and the others leave, Arthur makes no move to follow. He sits on his horse, the very picture of the Roman ideal, and watches them leave. Lancelot does hate him then, hot and burning in his chest. He does not say farewell, just turns and leads the way to the coast.

The green land and grey skies of Britannia are achingly familiar. Lancelot sits mindlessly on his horse and lets the past and present bleed together until he can't tell the difference. The chill seeps into his hands with every step until he stops his horse and looks back.

He barely remembers his childhood. His home is not that barely remembered hut in the middle of the grasslands. He is not the boy plucked from his family so many years ago. His family might be dead or scattered. The home he remembers might be a ruin. Lancelot looks back and hears the march of the Danes come to steal the home that Lancelot has made for himself. He can almost smell the salt of the sea, the promise of his freedom and Lancelot turns his horse's head back to the home that he still has.

The weight falls off his shoulders and the miles pass faster as Lancelot races back, his brothers at his side and Arthur ahead of him. Lancelot has never feared battle with them beside him and he urges his horse into a gallop, riding to meet his fate head on.


End file.
